3 months ago
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Bharti Airtel Ltd. has emerged among the largest investors successful undersea cables, which link Indian networks with the planetary internet, the steadfast told The Hindu. “Today, we run India’s largest undersea cablegram portfolio, with implicit 4,00,000 way kilometres crossed 50 countries successful 5 continents and investments successful much than 34 marquee systems specified arsenic i2i, EIG, IMEWE, and SEA-ME-WE-4, making america 1 of the astir extensively connected providers globally,” an Airtel spokesperson told The Hindu.
Much of India’s net relies connected contented cached successful section information centres. The undersea cables supply important infrastructure that allows this contented to beryllium transported to India and alteration telephone calls and different usage cases wherever information indispensable beryllium exchanged with different countries.
India has supra 400 terabits per 2nd of capableness connected specified cables. Indian fixed broadband connections person an mean download velocity of 62 Mbps. But if each of India’s 4.5 crore fixed-line broadband subscribers attempted to download a record from abroad, and did not person to stock subsea capableness with the 94 crore mobile information subscriptions, they would execute little than a sixth of that download speed. If each net users, including 4G and 5G users, tried to download a record from overseas astatine the aforesaid time, speeds would driblet to little than 512 kilobits per second, a 4th of the authoritative explanation of broadband.
Subsea cables presently onshore chiefly astatine Mumbai and Chennai, from wherever their bandwidth is made disposable to Indian networks. India has less cables landing than Singapore, a metropolis authorities with less residents than astir Indian metros.
Airtel said that astir fractional the capableness India does person was from projects wherever it was a consortium member. In 2025, the steadfast said, it “brought the SEA ME WE 6 cablegram to India, landing it successful 2 of our stations, 1 each successful Mumbai and Chennai, connecting India straight to a 21,700 km cablegram strategy betwixt Singapore and France and bringing astir 220 Tbps of further capableness into the country.”
“You volition proceed to spot america put aggressively truthful that India not lone keeps gait with planetary request but genuinely emerges arsenic a determination and planetary hub for subsea connectivity.”
Policy challenges
Airtel said definite policies needed to beryllium tweaked to promote much subsea cables to onshore successful India. “The subsea manufacture is simply a highly capital-intensive sector, truthful argumentation interventions that heighten the ‘ease of doing business’ specified arsenic taxation exemptions for a circumstantial period, customs work reductions [as astir cables and associated instrumentality are imported into India], streamlined licence & support process, volition beryllium important to pull investors to Indian shores,” the spokesperson said.
“In addition, recognizing subsea cablegram operations arsenic “essential services” would thrust greater synergy amongst each Government agencies, ensuring faster deployment and reduced attraction turn-around times.”
The steadfast said India’s subsea capacities needed to turn multifold to enactment aboriginal needs. “Industry estimates suggest that to afloat realise India’s imaginable arsenic a planetary transit hub, subsea infrastructure capableness volition request to grow by astir 4-5 times, supported by a beardown pipeline of caller systems landing connected the Indian coastline successful the adjacent fewer years,” Airtel said.
